Saturday, July 31, 2010

Ever since Pandemic Legion started to popularize it the Armour HAC gang has been the flavour of the month (FOTM). For months stories about these AB fitted Armour tanked gangs destroying BS fleets and carriers without taking losses have been filling the battle-reports. As someone whose skills are not up to flying these ships (especially since I don't fly Ammar) I have been feeling rather left out.

Well, last night (around the time my daughter was born whoot whoot but that is another story) an Agony gang (obviously not including me) of just over a dozen BS slaughtered a much much larger and more expensive RAZOR armour HAC gang.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

The double bubble cloaky Sabre is always welcome in a fleet. The point of the ship is not to do damage, but rather to launch warp interdiction bubbles, and survive. There are other Sabre fits that are great damage dealers and for solo work, but this fit is basically the ultimate support ship in fleet. A bubble can be used for the following situations

Preventing an enemy fleet from warping during combat

Catching an enemy ship jumping in from warping.

Catching an enemy ship warping to a gate, making it land off-gate.

Slowing down a pursuing enemy fleet.

Splitting an enemy fleet into two.

Catching an enemy fleet forcing them off a gate.

Preventing a super-cap from warping.

Preventing an enemy ship/fleet from warping to your fleet.

I will probably go into detail all of these scenarios in later posts. However for now it can not be stressed how advantages having two bubbles and a cloak is. Having two bubbles means that you can bubble one side of a gate, jump through, and then bubble the other side. It also means that if you are not in a perfect spot to catch the enemy fleet, you can drop a bubble, power to a better spot and drop another. The cloak allows you to drop a bubble and cloak up, staying alive in a big fleet fight. Once the first bubble goes down, uncloak and drop the second bubble and then get out someplace safe. The cloak also can hid your ship from an enemy so they are not aware that your fleet has a dictor.

All 4 dictors can be similarly fit with two bubbles and a cloak. The main advantage of the Sabre is speed. It is by far the fastest which allows it to get into position and get out of danger faster then the others. It is also however the most expensive. If you can't afford it, or don't fly rust, a Flycatcher, Heretic or an Eris will serve just fine in a pinch.

So if you always want to be welcome in fleet, assisting the fleet get the kills, bring a double bubble cloaky Sabre and your FC will love you.

Well, they seem to have succeeded beyond expectations. As should have been predicted they managed to take over a sizable chunk of Providence, not through fighting, but through the metagame. A mole with director level access in UK booted most of the corps out of UK and now a shell of UK is effectively a part of HYDRA complete with numerous key stations and systems.

Providence, yet again is burning. On one side you have the remains of UK, HYDRA joined by CVA, and on the other side you have the booted corps from UK (most seemed to have now temporarily joined CO2) combined with the other members of new providence. Support from Atlas and AAA is also expected.

Unlike some other invasions we have heard about following disbanding this one should be a lot more interesting. Almost all of the corps in Providence are in it for the Pew Pew. HYDRA certainly wants to have a good fight, and the rest of Providence is more than willing to go along. No fail-cascading here for anyone. If anything the booted members of UK are more active then ever in their drive to win back what they have lost.

If I am disappointed by anyone it has to be with CVA. Despite being a long-time enemy, UK was quick to support CVA when CVA was disbanded. That disbandment was overturned (turned out to be an account hack) but I would have thought that CVA would have had the honour to remember that act of respect for UK. Turns out now, CVA has gloated about the destruction of UK and is now joined with the invaders.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Simply put kiting is using range to mitigate the damage that your opponent is doing to you. To do this effectively in PvP several conditions must be met...

1. You must be able to prevent your enemy from warping away.2. You must be faster/more maneuverable then your opponent.3. Your damage must be less affected by the range then your opponent.

If you have all three of those conditions then you can 'Kite' the opponent.

A classic example of this would be a fight I had in a Stabber against a blaster fitted Vexor. By setting my orbit to around 15km I was able to keep safely out of blaster range while keeping him within the falloff of my barrage loaded autocannons. I was even able to keep his medium Hammerhead II drones from getting close enough to kill me The hard part was managing my cap since I was not stable with the MWD on.

So the next time you find yourself in a fight, think to yourself, what sort of weapons is the opponent likely to have, and how can I use range to reduce his damage?

Sunday, July 25, 2010

I have decided to start a new project and provide alternative commentary to the matches of the 8th Alliance Tournament. The idea behind this is to watch the video with the sound muted while listening to my description of the match. I have timed it so you should press start on the commentary at about the same time as pressing start on the video. Then mute the video and watch it with my commentary. Sounds easy right....

Rather then give a play-by-play, I am going to provide a discussion of what is going on and the strategies in use. I thought that the official commentators did a pretty good job under the circumstances. Things happen very fast in the tournament and doing this project has given me new respect for their ability to convey what is happening in real-time. I fortunately have the benefit of hind-site and the ability to watch the whole match first before discussing it.

Anyways, this is my first time doing something like this. Hopefully I don't make too many mistakes.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Welcome to the nineteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This months topic comes to us from @evepress, who he asks: The CSM: CCP's Meta Game? The CSM, an EVE players voice to CCP. Right? In the grand scheme of things yes, the players bring up issues and the CSM presents them to CCP. But in its current iteration the CSM was supposed to be given small authority to assign CCP assets to projects that the CSM thought needed work on. As it has come out, this was not the case. So fellow bloggers, is the CSM worth it, has the CSM improved the game in any way, or is it just a well thought out scam by CCP to give us players a false sense of input in the game? What's your take?

Wow, my first installment into the blog banter and it is about a topic was trying my best not to talk about much ... the CSM.

Personally I think that the CSM is really a victim of it's own success. For the first few CSMs nobody really took it seriously. It was correctly assumed that the CSM was just a PR move from CCP to be used in marketing and to defuse some of the T20 scandal. CCP spun the CSM as an innovative and unique concept where players have input into the development process. It made for great marketing and drew additional players to EVE while helping to retain old ones.

The first two expansions out in the CSM era were quite good and well received. The Quantum Rise and Apocrypha were both excellent expansions that fixed issues and added great new content. However then came Dominion with its fleet fight crippling lag and finally Tyrannis with its near total lack of interesting features. Players became unhappy and the CSM was purpose built for them to vent their frustrations.

The meeting minutes from the last CSM summit reveal a disaster. Basically the CSM asked CCP to fix problems that exist in the game. CCP responded by saying that they were going to concentrate instead on developing new features.

In response to the summit there was a dev-blog from CCP-Zulu outlining the current development priorities of CCP and the resources dedicated to them. Like the CSM summit this was mostly a song and dance about how great the new features we are working on are going to be and that there are no resources to spend on fixing old features. That the development team at CCP thought that the post would lower tensions is an indication of just how out of touch they are with the player base.

War has come to EVE. But it is not war between players, but war between CCP and the players.

Who will win?

These are the two options:1. If the players loose then players stop paying CCP $180 per year and CCP looses. :(2. If the players win then CCP keeps getting $180 per year per account so CCP wins. :)

Should be an easy choice for CCP but the IT industry is littered with the corpses of companies who chose option one. let's hope that CCP does not make the same mistake.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

There are times when obsessing about this game can get out of hand. Most of the time obsessing about our little pastime is fine. However there are times when RL has to take the priority. My wife is about to give birth to my second child. Obviously the next 6 months are going to be a little crazy.

Playing Eve under these conditions can be quite a challenge. It is rather hard to explain to the Dramiel powering towards you to just hold on a minute.... the kid just burped all over me :(. In fact I think I am going to declare a new Law of Eve...

Given a two hour period camping a gate, the odds of a target showing up is proportional to how many of the following (wife, child, neighbor, phone, parents) trying to talk to you and get your attention.

So what sorts of Eve related things can I do? Firstly my plan is to keep on with this blog. There is no need for a pause button. Secondly I think I am going to concentrate on building up my industrial character. I am trying to get a char setup for invention and the like. Again, with the exception of some moving stuff around in low-sec, this should work just fine.

My questions for my few readers is.... What do you guys do in Eve when you don't think you can devote enough time to it to do some PvP?

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Who doesn't remember their first solo kill. IMHO the first solo kill in Eve is the most intense gaming experience ever.

It starts with the hunt for a ship that looks possible to kill. Once found then the heart starts pumping as the adrenaline kicks in. You power towards the enemy trying to activate modules that seem to take forever to turn on. Finally you have point and your weapons are blazing with all their might. Tunnel visions sets in as you notice that his shields and armour are dropping faster than your own... and finally you see the explosion.

For me my first solo kill was an older character called Johny Trigger. He was in a Rifter and I was in my shiny new Stabber that I could barly use the 220mm Autocannons on. At the time I had been recently kicked out of the Minmattar Militia (friendly fire) and I was now flying in a wannabe Mercenary corp called Frost Company Mercs. The corp was based out of the Uisper system in Metropolis low-sec space. Mostly we just ratted and docked up whenever anyone was in system with us.

Anyways I had just gotten enough skills and money to put together a Stabber so I headed of to Hek to go and put one together. When I came back into my home system there was one other pilot in local so I thought why not, and I tried to hunt him down. After a few minutes ineptly using my directional scanner I found him at a belt so I warped there at zero. His Rifter was about 80km off of me when I landed so I started powering towards him. I mostly expected him to bail but instead he powered towards me and the battle was on. I aggressed first, taking a hit on my sec status. However he made the mistake of trying to orbit me at 5km, within the tracking and range of my 220mm 'Scout' Auto-cannons. He probably wasn't expecting me to be armour tanked and fitted with scram-web (WTF kind-of fit is that!) and he soon went down.

All I really remember of the fight was feeling like I was having a heart-attack my heart was pounding so fast.

Icing on the cake was killing him again several days later, this time in a Thrasher :)

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Although I prefer flying the shield tanked Nano-Cane for solo work and fast moving cruiser gangs, it is not really appropriate for bringing to a gang using armour logistics. You should always try and match your tank to the logistics available if any.

The Armour cane gives up a lot of maneuverability and some DPS potential to the Nano-cane. However it has several significant advantages. The overall EHP (buffer tank) on the Armour cane is about 40% greater than the buffer on the Nano-Cane. This means that in battles you can last a lot longer without logistics support. The other huge advantage of the Armour Cane is that it has three mid-slots available for a variety of e-war. The value of this should not be underestimated when taking on a larger gang.

These two advantages also make this ship better for bringing to gangs running no logistics and/or is light on dedicated ewar ships. A half-dozen armour tanked battlecruisers with lots of e-war in the mids can often take on a much larger shield tanked gang with less ewar and come away clean.

The below example is setup for when I am running as FC. When I run as FC I like to keep the e-war simple by using a target painter. It just gets placed on the primary target and helps myself and the rest of the gang track and do damage. Additionally I fit an ECCM module because it makes target calling difficult if I can't target anything. If not running as FC it makes sense to co-ordinate with the other gang members for a balance of Sensor Dampers and Tracking Disruptors.

Also note the use of double tracking enhancers. These two modules greatly increase the range of the guns meaning that this slow ship does not have to power around between targets. If you are able to engage at close range however, it makes sense to switch to Republic Fleet short range ammo for additional damage.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Yesterday I talked about viewing the fit on a ship without boarding it. Turns out I underestimated the level of fail in Eve's implementation by an order of magnitude. Firstly the way I described by looking at the modules tab is completely useless unless you are looking at the ship you are in. If you are looking at any ship but a noob ship or your current ship the module tab is not missing. If the noob ship is your current ship it shows the correct modules. However if it is not your current ship it incorrectly shows as having the civilian modules that came free.

However that is not the newish feature. What the notes in the meeting minutes actually referred to was something else. If you look at your assets window and go to any station but the one you are in you can select a ship and view it's contents. In the list of contents it will show if the item is in a high, medium or low slot. Unfortunately the restriction on being unable to do this with ships in the station that you are in makes this feature almost completely useless. Also, since you can only see the name of the ship, if you have multiple ships of the same name it prevents you from telling them apart.

Here is the View Contents drop-down:

And here is the contents box. Note that it shows the location of the item:So to reiterate... Eve has three ways of viewing the fittings of a ship.

1. Board the ship and use fittings screen2. Board the ship and click on show-info of the same ship. Look at the modules tab.3. Use the assets window and 'View Contents' of ships. It will tell you if they are in a slot or not. Does not work for only the hanger of the station you are docked in.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Looking through the minutes of the last CSM summit (a very controversial one) I came across this rather nice tidbit:

View ship fittings in hanger without boarding ship. If you have several ships of the same type in your hanger but with different setups it isn't possible to see which is which without boarding them. A potential solution is to name the ships differently, however Eve has a habit of resetting ships names on session changes.CCP’s response: This is currently possible to do with ships in hangars in other locations (Asset window, Right Click ship, View Content). Adding the option for current hangar will be investigated and implemented when time allows.Session discussion: CSM asked why no one knows about this functionality; CCP acknowledged that it should have been better documented – however the information has been available in the patch notes since Dominion was deployed (http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?patchlogID=194).-CSM CCP Meetings 23-25-06-2010 (page 27)

This is a really useful feature that no-one seems to have heard about before. In the past if you several ships of the same type with different fits (say one shield and one armour Hurricane) and you wanted a particular fit, you would have to board each ship one at a time to check the fittings. Since boarding a ship activated a session timer this could be rather time-consuming, especially if trying to rush out for a response fleet. Now you should be able to right-click on a ship (either in you hanger or in your inventory) and choose show info. The last tab in the show info window will be labeled modules and will show what is actually fit on the ship.

That is the theory at least. In practice unfortunately the idea is bugged.

Here is how it works. (slightly differently then described by CCP in their response) While in your hanger you can choose show info from the right-click menu as below...

And this should give you a list of modules under the modules tab as shown below. In the example below I am on-board the Merlin and am looking at the fitted modules on my Ibis. I now know what is fit without boarding it. Yeah!..

If I now look at the Merlin while on-bard the Merlin I get to see what is on it as well...

So far so good. Sometimes it doesn't work so well. When I am on board the Ibis and select the Merlin, this is what I get :( ...

Sunday, July 11, 2010

So I was sitting in Jita on my trading alt crying about the state of my finances when I noticed someone spamming local with a notice that the HYDRA RELOADED was recruiting any and all. Two things were suspicious. Firstly, Jita local is just a bunch of spam for various scams, WTF is an established alliance like HYDRA doing posting there. Secondly, WTF is an elite PvP alliance like HYDRA doing a mass recruitment drive for. Something was very odd was going on. So I took a closer look at the character expecting to see some sort of transparent scam and this not actually being HYDRA. Surprisingly I could find none. It actually looked like they were mass recruiting

For those who are unaware HYDRA RELOADED was the reincarnation of a much older alliance. The new version of HYDRA RELOADED consists mostly of PvP experts and they placed second in the recent Alliance Tournament (Although they did loose their first match to AGONY*).

Sure enough it looks like HYDRA RELOADED is filling up with recruits, both new corps and individual characters. (*Linky*) I particularly think the Justin Bieber Fan Club and Industries is a strong addition. As of now they have over 1000 pilots. Despite their numbers there are some concerns about the 'quality' of their new members. While I recognize one or two of the names, most are unknown often with a singe pilot.

So what are they going to do with all of them? It looks like they may be planning an invasion of Providence. Personally I have my doubts. Any invasion of Providence will be a long slog and I doubt the small gang PvP specialty corps that make up the core of HYDRA will want to spearhead this. Time will tell. My main concern is that if they do push into providence AGONY will have to blue up with everyone else to repel the invaders. That would not be so good.

*By loose I mean they destroying all our ships but one but then they self-destructed giving us the win and guaranteeing themselves an easy match for the second qualifying round. *Linky*

Friday, July 9, 2010

As I have been doing these 'Ships I fly' articles I noticed I haven't really been flying any cruisers. So I threw together a Rupture and went on a little roam through providence. Unfortunately things were a little quiet. There was a report of a small group of shock and awe (AWE) ratters up towards YQB-22. A sort of hodgepodge fleet assembled to take them on and I joined up. The trick with ratters is to land on them before they notice that you are there. I stayed a couple of jumps out keeping an eye on F-YH5B where there was a large Circle-of-two (CO2) presence. As things started to come together for the gank... an AWE rifter came our way and the gig was up. The ratters pos'ed up and we gave up. Around this time CO2 started to make a move in our direction so there was some tension as one of our slow moving BS almost came upon them. Fortunately our BS got out of system just as CO2 entered so they were none the wiser.

Frustrated with the lack of action I switched to a Rifter and challenged another Rifter from Ushra'Khan to a 1v1. I brought my usual shield tank rifter but I fit it with an AB instead of a MWD. Interestingly my opponent also went shield tank and he tried to kite me using barrage. A little bit of overloading the AB and I was back to PB range where he melted once his shields were through. He never made it past the 1/2 way on mine. Barrage just doesn't have the same DPS as RF fusion. My main surprise was his shield tank. I assumed (as UK mostly armour fits their rifters) that he would be armour tanked so I was using RF Fusion. If he had noticed that I am almost always in a shield tank (I had fought him before) and used EMP then I would have likely come out on the short end of the stick.

Anyways, that was my evening. I am going to try and get the Rupture in a few more fights before I write the 'Ships I Fly' article for it.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Well, I have now done it. The old Eve rule is don't fly what you can't afford to lose. Well I have managed to effectively loose 75% of my (small to begin with) net-worth across both accounts over the last few days. Nearly a billion isk is pretty much gone with no hope for a quick recovery :(. And I didn't even get to see a pretty explosion.

I got pwned in Jita 4-4, in station. Of the many kinds of PvP in Eve the market is probably the most dangerous. Fortunes can be created and lost in a heartbeat. In my case I had found a nice little product that could be purchased by missioners in their LP store. It typically sold for around 200 thousand - 300 thousand isk on the market. I discovered that I could put in a buy order for 100-125k and then flip the items. At that price most of the mission runners seemed perfectly happy to sell me most of the stuff, and I would re-sell it back to PvPers who used the items for twice the price. Over a period of several months I had pretty much cornered the market. Anytime someone else tried to compete, I dumped the price down, they followed and then I bought their stock up at a pittance. Then I would drive the price up again and the money would flow in. It seemed like every day I was making 10-20 million isk with the one item. Oh what happy times...

Unfortunately over the last week things started going from bad to worse. First someone entered the market with a hauler full of product. I am not sure where they got it from. Possibly from LP, or a nice loot drop in PvP. I tried pulling his price down, but he would not move significantly. Sure if I posted 10 isk less he would follow, but I just couldn't get his price down. Meanwhile as a few more players started entering the market and I had lost all control over the price. I managed to buy most of it out, but then more and more would show up. Nearly a billion isk was sent down the rabbit hole and now I am sitting on a mountain of product.... that my characters don't even use. In the end I just gave up, posted my entire stock in a massive sell order (below what I paid for it) and will check on it in a month or two to see if I get some of my money back.

Back to ship pvp... what is the worst I could loose, a T2 fitted Battleship ... no problem.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

In the history of the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) there have been few delegates more controversial than Ankhesentapemkah. She had created the Take Care party that had been quite influential in the CMS for the past few seasons and now she was a member. She ran on a PvE/anti-PvP platform and had some 'interesting' ideas for how eve should work. Today CCP has released a statement 'member removed from csm' removing her begin in breach of the NDA.

Personally I am not surprised. Ank' seemed to be walking a very fine line working for one company developing games while serving on an official player council of another one. Although the specific violations leading to her removal have not been disclosed the possibilities are endless. One thing I do know is that she claimed her past experience on the CSM as employment for CCP on her resume, something that is misleading if not actually false. Since claiming to be an employee of CCP is a bannable offense in Eve, I am sure that the CSM also had such restrictions that she was clearly in violation of.

It is also possible that she was removed for using information to gain an in-game advantage like the Larkongate scandal. If true then this is the least serious reason for her removal. However Larkonis has said on Scrapheap...

I will say this. When I commited my little infraction the CCP dudes were obviously upset and pissed but they were pretty chill and willing to work it all out with me (ie, not threatening legal action, not forcing me to reimburse them for flights, letting me issue a statement, allowing me to graciously fall on my sword etc). One thing that came out during my interview without coffee was 'At least you weren't selling data or information to our competitors'. Given that Ankh works for a game development company and this all appears quite hush hush...-Larkonis Trassler

This implies that something much more damming may have happened. If it turns out that she had done something revealing secrets to another game development company then it is much more serious. If true then that is it for the CSM ever having access to any real information about future developments. It also means that she will have a huge DO NOT HIRE ME mark on her resume. She may also be sued by CCP.

Anyways sucks to be her, sucks for the CSM, sucks for Eve in general that such a twit was elected, and hopefully this is just a minor incident and not a CSM destroying one.

And for you you who voted for her... just vote for teadaze next time, he actually cares about the CSM for more then a reason to pad his resume and get free trips to Iceland.

And also to see why she was so bad... here is the vote on improving the overload interface so that it would be easier to click on overload and not turn off a module instead. How anyone who has ever used overheating could be against this is for you to figure out.

When reached for comment, Eva had the following to say: "All I can say at the moment is that out of respect for the CSM, the players of EVE, as well as the good people at CCP, I cannot give any details besides my personal conviction that CCP's statement is not in relation to any of my recent publications, and that I do not share CCP's conclusion that there has in fact been an NDA breach. I am currently engaged in following up this situation with CCP." Eva plans to keep her followers updated on her situation via her CSM blog as the situation develops.

For those that think versatility is a four-letter-word in eve I give you the Nano-Cane. The general rule in Eve is that ships with lots of low slots are best Armour tanked, and ships with lots of medium slots are best shield tanked. According to that logic the Hurricane, with 6 lows and 4 mids is best armour tanked. The nano-cane turns that entire concept on it's head and places a shield tank on the Hurricane.

The reasons for this are three-fold:

1. The Nano-Cane without armour plates and a nanofibre II is faster and more maneuverable then most cruisers.2. With all those extra low-slots not needed for tanking, a lot of weapon modifications can be installed. This, combined with the double damage bonus, results in really nice DPS with good range.3. Even fully fit out with 6 425mm Autocannons, there is still room for two medium energy neutralizers and a full flight of light drones adding even more versatility against smaller ships.

In fleet this ship really shines. With a max speed of 1386m/s (1966m/s overheated) this ship can quickly move from target to target. The 6 autocannons belt out 617 dps with selectable damage types. Switching to Barrage lowers dps slightly but range is extended to over 25km into falloff. The main weakness of the nano-cane is the mediocre tank (45k ehp). Compared to the other race's battle-cruisers it comes off a bit lacking. However fit as below it has good resists and can prove tough as nails with scimatar / basilisk support. Without logistics support going with extender rigs is preferred.

In solo work this ship can also perform admirably. With it's speed, neuts, drones and damage it can take on multiple cruisers and/or frigates and emerge victorious.

What is impressive about CrazyKinux's efforts is how he has really motivated the Eve Blogging community to work together. Eve players are usually stereotyped as a bunch of suspicious, self-serving anti-social types. Just look at the junk posted on Scrapheap or in COAD. However, instead of the blogging community heading that way, Eve bloggers have risen above the fray with a general commitment to respect each other and grow the community. The Blog Banters are a good example of that.

So good work CK and thanks for listing me....

Oooh and looking at page views, this blog now has had over 600 page impressions.

Monday, July 5, 2010

As many of my readers may know Agony Unleashed runs the PvP university. These are basically courses in PvP that we teach most weeks for a small fee in isk. We claim that the purpose of these classes is to provide education in PvP to New Eden. In reality Rells (the founder of Agony) came up with these classes so we could have a big fleet of T1 frigates go around and kill everything. As a result each class has a lecture part and then a roam component where we do just that.

This last run was quite epic. I joined up near the end after a 60 minute long battle with over 40 kills was over (note that the killboard does not handle the class well due to multiple corps.... everything in red is in fact a kill for us). Nevertheless I joined up in a Jaguar and helped out on several nice ganks against superior fleets. Unfortunately the Agony ticker does make me primary a little faster then the classmates but I managed to warp in and out of the battle a couple of times allowing my shield to recharge. (Tip: When in fleet taking serious damage don't die if you can help it ... try and get away so you can come back again) All in all it was a lot of fun and recommend these classes to any new (and old) pilot.Feedback Thread

What we offer:* T2 ships at, or slightly below market value.* Sovereignty in space filled mostly with hostiles.* Small fleets, often headed by a bonkers South African engaging larger fleets belonging to our neighbors.* Lots of enemies (almost no friendlies).* Ratting in Providence (see earlier point about space filled with hostiles).* Easy access to high-sec (only one major static gate camp with carrier support camping us in).* Lots of great personalities in corp suffering from P.T.S.D. and /or alcoholism.

What we are looking for:* Experienced PvP pilots who want to give up all the perks of being in a large alliance.* Young pilots willing to not suck.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Often when flying solo you need to engage an enemy close enough that you can both scram web them. The problem is that many of you opponents will try to do the exact opposite and engage you outside of this range. For example you might be in a Jaguar and you want to get an easy kill in on an interceptor. If the interceptor isn't in range it will point you and his friends will kill you. So the trick is to engage it within scram-web range.

To properly execute this trick you both need to be on grid with each other, but out of range. The enemy might try burning towards you or otherwise trying to get within point range. What you need to do is align for an easily distinguished celestial. Either a planet or a belt. Then warp to it at 0. The enemy should be able to see you warping to the celestial and, as often as not, he will follow you warping to 0 as well.

When you land simply check the directional and you should see him coming in. Activate your scram/web/afterburner. Keep double-clicking on the ship in the overview as he lands and presto... you now have him.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Unlike the Rifter or the Jaguar, the Stiletto has one main purpose.... to hold a point on an enemy ship until help arrives, and stay alive doing it. It is a job that the Stiletto does beautifully. Fast, agile, maneuverable, it can quickly get within range of it's bonused point of an enemy ship and prevent it from warping. Thanks to the bonus to the microwarp drive signature radius, it does not suffer nearly as much signature bloom as other ships when using a microwarp. This means that it can't be easily tracked or damaged with missiles. A bonus to the range of it's point allows it to tackle even battleships while staying out of range of a long range neut.

What is most impressive about the Stiletto in particular is the extra mid-slot. Different pilots will fit different modules there. Another point, a scram, a tracking disruptor, a sensor damper, a target painter, ECCM or even a medium shield extender can all be put there and contribute to the fight.

An interceptor is also a great ship to join an existing fleet with. If you log in and see a fleet 6 jumps out it may be quite dangerous to fly a heavy ship out there. However, an interceptor can navigate through 0.0 quickly and safely. And it is always welcome on a fleet.

Personally I highly recommend a Stiletto (or other interceptor) as a new pilots first introduction into T2 ships. It is reasonably cheap and requires relatively light skills to use. It also is a very important ship in a fleet. Most fleets use interceptors as scouts as well as tackle so the interceptor is a very busy and important role requiring attention and constant communication with the FC.

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